


Hyacinth in Repose

by DictionaryWrites



Series: J/W Fics [1]
Category: Jeeves & Wooster
Genre: Class Differences, Cute, Driving, Fluff, Intimacy, M/M, Mythology References, POV Bertram "Bertie" Wooster, POV Jeeves, Pre-Relationship, Sleepiness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-24 21:04:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17711555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites
Summary: On a night drive, Bertie has nowhere else to sleep but on the shoulder of his valet.





	Hyacinth in Repose

The Wooster corpus could, it might be happily said, take quite a bit of a thrashing, when it came down to it. It had withstood, up to now, all sorts of injuries – savages by dogs, all manner and variety of nasty falls, even wild attempts on my life by angry men. In the case of the n.f., well, these hadn’t yet destroyed the old bod, except for a few sprains here and there… And, I might add, I had a startling resilience, if resilience is the word I mean, to colds and fevers and all the rot of that description. Even as all my fellows fell down to the threat of some impending influenza earlier this spring, the old immune system gave it what for, and I passed about my day with nary a _sniffle_.

Now, however, the composure was failing me.

It was not injury or illness that had worn down my steadfast self-possession, no: it was that which ails us all, the need for _sleep_.

Well. Ails nearly us all, or nearly all of us, I should say.

The inimitable Jeeves, my valet, gentleman’s gentleman, and personal saviour, showed no sign of flagging in the face of Morpheus whatsoever. The two of us were driving, the headlamps alight and whitening the dark roads before us with their spectral glow, in the dark. It was very nearly three o’clock, and we had rushed out in the middle of the night to avoid a particular bother expected to begin in the morning, but it was another few hours to London, even with Jeeves’ capable hands upon the wheel and his yet more capable feet on the pedals, and I was flagging dreadfully.

“I say, Jeeves,” I I-sayed, tipping my head back against the seat. The valises had been set into the trunk, but in the backseat was a rather impressive amount of flowers we needed to cart into the house of the Lady Clopp for Aunt Dahlia when we arrived back in the metrop., and there was nowhere in which a young chap might stretch out and rest the noggin. “Rotten, isn’t it?”

“Sir?” Jeeves asked, giving me a sort of sideways glance without actually taking his dark gaze from the road ahead, which was of course, the right and proper thing. _He_ didn’t seem bothered by this night drive business at all, and seemed jolly well alright with the whole thing, his expression a breeze of comfortable contentment, his handsome lips quirked slightly up at their edges, as they so often were when he was satisfied with his situation. Jeeves rather liked to drive, I was aware, and the obsidian blanket of thick night about us didn’t seem to deter him much.

“Not being able to slip into the loving arms of Morpheus and all that… Morpheus is the chap I mean, yes?”

“The figure in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, being the son of Sleep? Worshiped, I believe, sir, in his capacity as patron god of dreams and dreaming, and heralded as a figure of sleep itself?”

“That’s the man.”

“The flowers are an unfortunate necessity, sir,” Jeeves said quietly, adjusting his position in his seat. Indeed, the backseat of the old car was not, in fact, the best place for one to accumulate the prescribed forty winks, or indeed even half a dozen, but it was still preferable to the front seat, where one was shoulder-to-shoulder with one’s driver. Indeed, in the backseat, even sitting up one might be spared the worst of the breeze: here in the front, without making of one’s companion a pillow, one could not escape it.

The night air was breezy and cool, rather running its affectionate fingers through the old Wooster mop, but the effect was not, alas, a soporific one. Bally _awful_ , if you were to ask me – with another few hours ahead of us, my eyes were rather lowering the curtain over the stage of the day, and I felt myself lolling, I say, _lolling_ , in my seat! Like the tongue in the dog’s mouth of yore, I lolled!

“Nonetheless,” Jeeves went on quietly, “I should give way to the drowsing instinct, if you feel it is to overtake you. To do otherwise, I believe, would do little for you. I would not be entirely scandalized, sir, were you to unconsciously, in the course of your slumber, put your weight upon my shoulder. There is limited space within the vehicle, and I do not believe the cranial burden on my shoulder should disturb my concentration overmuch.”

I moved to reply, but was assailed before so doing by a sudden yawn that perched its feet upon my lower front teeth, puts its little hands upon the lower row, and then did a dashed extensive arch of the back. For a moment, I expect I rather resembled a drowsy snake, all but unhinging the jaw.

“Er,” I said, finally. It was not really what I wanted to say. Certainly, when a fellow wants to say something, he usually wants to say something more substantial than “Er.” Most fellows do, anyway. I suppose I can’t speak for every chap when I say such things as “when a fellow,” but if any fellow takes offence to the statement as to “Er”s, he can bally well write me. “Would that be, er, well. _Preux_ , Jeeves?”

Jeeves did not initially respond. It seemed rather odd of a valet, that he should invite the young master to lean a head upon his resident forelimbs. Certainly, Jeeves and I, I felt, enjoyed a rather chummy relationship, vis-à-vis valet and master, but this did not stretch, in my mind, to canoodling in the car seat.

“Er, no, Jeeves, I don’t think so,” I said. “Wouldn’t want to offset you with, uh, the humble ingratiation of the sharp chin into the tender shoulder, what?”

“Very good, sir,” Jeeves replied. “I merely wished to say I would forgive the indiscretion, in the event you could not retain your grasp upon a state of wakefulness.”

“Very good of you, Jeeves, but, er… No.”

Of course, that dratted _Morpheus_ , working in devilish conjunction with the night time weakness of the Wooster corpus to the lure of sleep, made a liar of me. Loll once more did my head upon the neck, back against the leather couching of the car seat, and I felt myself, as if seeing my own body from some secreted viewing spot, fall against Jeeves’ broad and square shoulder. Immediately, I jolted up, but soon enough, my resolve flagged dreadfully, and I drooped once more as a sunflower in cloudy climes.

It was not proper, I was sure, to sleep upon one’s personal gentleman.

With that said, I bally well did so.

♤ ♥ ♧ ♥ ♧ ♥ ♤

We arrived before Mr Wooster’s home in the metropolis some minutes after five o’clock, and dawn was breaking most splendidly. The dark skies were lightening, giving way to the warmth of the sunshine spreading upward and outward: they were a charming peach colour, little patches of blue showing through in places, and I smiled slightly to behold the sunrise.

No one walked the streets at this hour, as yet, and I glanced to the right, taking in the figure of Bertram Wooster, my employer, beside me.

Only a few hours before, I had had to all but pour him, liquid in his somnolent stupor, into a suitably warm suit for a night’s travel, and although he had roused some in the first segment of the journey, he had soon given way once more to his natural want of sleep. Mr Wooster, I had noticed in our time together, was a gentleman to which sleep was quite crucial, and unless he had imbibed quite heavily, he preferred to retire at around eleven o’clock, wherein he would repose in his bed until ten or, often, until the eleventh hour rolled around once more.

Aware of the young master’s head drooping beside me upon the seat, I had endeavoured to allow him the freedom to relax… Quite correctly, he had noted the potential impropriety of my allowance. Quite expectedly, he had proceeded to lay his head upon my shoulder nonetheless.

In sleep, now, Mr Wooster’s expression was blank and entirely relaxed, bled of the stresses so plain in his usual state of facial contortion, and I was aware of the set of his lashes. Mr Wooster’s eyelashes, I had long-since noticed, were long and a rather lighter colour than his mousy-brown hair: the colour of the delicate follicles was so light as to be almost strawberry in its blond, and in the new light, birthed in the charm of dawn, they reminded me of dawn sunlight on a field of golden maize, blessed by Apollonian sunshine. Mr Wooster’s lips, mercifully, were loosely closed despite the apparent depth of his doze; his cheek was curled quite tightly against the rounded corner of my shoulder, his arms crossed tightly against his skinny chest.

There were members of Mr Wooster’s social circle that had described him, quite often, as _gangling_ , and indeed again as _lanky_ : these two descriptors were not erroneous in their application, but I felt, in this moment, they were perhaps unbecoming of the figure beside me. Such words had implications of a figure unaware of his largesse, sprawled one way and the other, that he might steal into another’s personal space, but this was not the case.

Mr Wooster, even in his sleep, curled against my shoulder and snoring softly through sensitive nostrils, did not impede unnecessarily upon my person. His knees were pressed together and rested neatly away from the edge of my own thighs upon the seat, and I was aware of the gap between our hips, although his head rested upon the pillow of my shoulder.

It was…

It would not be remiss of me, I am sure, to describe Mr Wooster as _endearing_. One looked upon his sleeping countenance, and one was prompted to recall the archetypal feline adozing by the fire, a subject of adoration by even the most hard-hearted of men.

“Mr Wooster, sir,” I prompted delicately.

“What ho,” my master mumbled, his mouth muffled against my upper arm.

Owing to the fineness of the morn, the scent of fresh flowers upon the car seat behind us, and indeed, the comfortable warmth of my employer against my shoulder, handsome as Hyacinth in his sleep, I allowed myself a small, secretarial smile.

“Mr Wooster, we are arrived,” I said, and I pushed the door of the car open: Mr Wooster jerked in his place, blinking wildly with his brightly blue eyes, and yawned forcefully as he scrambled to follow me from the vehicle.

“I say, Jeeves,” he said exhaustedly. “I should like a nap after all that driving.”

It occurred to me that a valet of lesser restraint might wryly comment that Mr Wooster had done no driving at all, but I was not, thankfully, possessed of such sarcastic weaknesses. I said, warmed with the cheer of the beauty of the morning, “Indeed, sir.”

I felt only a little fatigue myself, and whilst Mr Wooster slept, I delivered the flowers to Lady Clopp, with which I returned to the flat. Knocking quietly on Mr Wooster’s door, I opened it a tick, noting that the young master had stirred, and was blinking at me where I stood in the doorway.

“Oh, Jeeves, what,” he said softly. “You should sleep, old thing. I shan’t need anything from you today.”

“You are very kind, sir,” I replied. “Ring if you have need of me.” Shutting the door closed, I heard immediately the soft ring of the summons bell, and I took hold of the door handle, pushing the door open once more and peering within.

“Jeeves,” Mr Wooster said sleepily, his fingers lingering on the bell.

“Mr Wooster, sir?”

“Have I told you I bally well respect your work lately, what?” He asked this question through a thick blanket and an exhausted slur, but I was able to decipher his meaning nonetheless, owing to some years of practice. 

“Just this night previous, sir, I believe you said something of the kind.”

“Nonetheless, Jeeves, I reiterate. Er. If reiterate is the word I mean?”

“Yes, sir. Very kind of you, sir.”

“G’night, Jeeves.”

“It is very nearly six o’clock, sir.”

“Oh? I’ll get up around midnight.” I felt my brow furrow slightly, but I allowed myself to let the error escape my focus: Mr Wooster’s face was already lolling once more upon the pillow, his person no doubt adrift in the current of Morpheus’ flow. Once more, I smiled, just slightly, and allowed myself to move from the room.

**Author's Note:**

> Hit me up [on Dreamwidth](https://dictionarywrites.dreamwidth.org/2287.html). Requests always open.


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